Happy Holidays!

Almost moving!

After almost 1.5 years of remodeling and rebuilding of our, 1950's house we are finally ready to move in! Can you believe it?! Of course, we still have a list of things to do, but the important projects like the kitchen, bathroom, the downstairs toilet, the hallway and breaking down a wall are finished. Most of the furniture will be transported on sunday, but we are going to sleep there for the first time on saturday. (moving our bed and the cat the day before 'moving day' seems to be a good idea to reduce stress for our cat)
Of course, this means a short leave from blogging - just a week will be enough, I guess.

In the meantime I've already worn my Top Honours jumper once! This happened before sewing the press studs on, so I had to close the neck opening while wearing the jumper. Well, as you can imagine, it wasn't easy (imagine trying to sew something in front of a mirror) but I really wanted to wear it and it was definitely worth the effort! Unfortunately I only managed to take two snapshots which I'm going to post tomorrow. Of course, I'm planning to take better pics and the pattern will follow soon.
I have a small Christmas-crochet-project I want to start and finish next week, while already working on my next knitting project.

Below a better picture of the Roman blinds which are now installed in the bay-window. I'm happy with it!

another corner finished

Looks like this piece of furniture was made for here!
It belonged to my BF's grandmother, who passed recently. Unfortunately no idea how old this little cabinet is or where it came from. The top and the back is marble. I might sand it one day, to freshen up the darkened color of the wood.

House: bathroom before & after

A first impression. Still have to clean but everything is installed at last!

Another vintage family piece

Another vintage family piece, this time from the inheritance of my boyfriend's grandmother who passed recently. The ceramic set consists of a wash basin with a pitcher, a soap dish and a comb holder. The stamp on the pieces says "Societé Ceramique Maestricht, Made in Holland" with a picture of a lion. Sadly, we don't know how old the pieces really are, but this particular stamp was in use between 1863 and 1955.

First Roman blind installed!

   
The pics were made yesterday evening, I don't have daylight versions yet. Tutorial on how to make the blinds posted here.

Bathroom and house progress

Can you believe that in between my knitting projects (I've already finished a new jumper project!), schoolwork (I'm following a post-bachelor  clinical instructor course from september until june next year) we are still working on our renovation project? In the meantime a little longer than a year but finally, the last huge project, the bathroom is close to the finish! I can't believe we've done it all by ourselves... We still need to paint the staircases ordered the last few heaters and right now I'm busy with sewing Roman blinds for the living room. Hopefully we can move in next month!

House progress: bathroom

Here we go again...
During the past few weeks I just totally lost my motivation to do anything in the new house. I needed a break from the dirt, the paint and the tiles. I worked on my knitting projects, trained for the 5 km city-run (coming up in october), managed to read the new Dan Brown book and Karin Slaughter books and worked a lot of hours in the hospital.

In the meantime BF was almost obsessively going on with the tileing the bathroom. The last room that really needs to be finished before we can move in. Yesterday we've finished the last bits (above) together. Now there is one tiny spot left to correct, which is becoming my obsession as he doesn't want to touch any tiles anymore. Now that I have a few days off I can do what I want!



As for the blog:
I already prepared a few posts on 1940's war-time knitting, with a fun little project which is also perfect for beginners! In the meantime I'm working on my first 1940's sweater (or jumper) making a lot of pics and making notes on every trick and change along the way! I'm planning to post them separately, as the most of it can be used for knitting any vintage pattern.





Just for fun: I love how green our street is!

Bathroom progress in new house...

We started about a year ago with the renovation of our new 1950's house. We are still not moved in, but we are getting closer. The last obstacle is the bathroom which is tiled for about 50%. Unfortunately the walls aren't straight, we even had to redo the wall behind the shower and toilet because it was done badly. Can you believe that a few months ago we've even paid someone, to get it done the right way?! I believe that by now we are able to do everything ourselves. It jut takes time...
In the meantime more and more stuff gets temporarily 'lost' between the two houses, like my sewing stuff. This means that in my free time I have to concentrate on knitting and crocheting at the moment, next to my Miss Lemon series. Sorry for the absence of sewing projects lately!
  





Me doing the wall tiles:
  

My mom and sister visited from Hungary and they brought an old lamp shade for our new kitchen! The glass shade was a gift from my mom to my grandma somewhere in the 1960's. It survived all those years and fits perfectly in our pistache-green kitchen!


  

House update: Hallway finished

The hallway is finished!
The 50's style tile walls are finished, including sanding and painting the walls in the hallway. I already wrote about it:

In the 50's when our house was built it was common to put tiles on the walls in the hallway. One of our neighbors have a few meters of the original hallway-tiles: light blue with a row of black square tiles at the bottom. Since blue is not my color when it comes to interiors we decided to use the same size tiles as the original in a greyish-cream color that goes well with the other colors in the house. We 'reproduced' the row of black square tiles as well. Pretty!

Here is what the finished tiles and painted walls looks like:

House - approaching the deadline!

We are approaching our deadline (1st of june 2013) for finishing the house and moving in. Made a lot of progress with one important + big task left: the bathroom. We are kind of avoiding to start on that and finish everything else first. Honestly, I think we are just afraid to mess it up... Really don't want to take tiles off again or solve all kinds of practical problems on the spot (walls that aren't straight and stuff like that)

In the meantime we managed to finish the dining room area. By breaking down a wall we created a light an spacious room and we are really pleased with how it came out! Ultimately we are going to break out the window and install french doors somewhere during the next few years. The door on the left isn't insulated at all so that needs to be changed as well:


Here is the current (almost finished) project: walltiles in the hallway. In the 50's when our house was built it was common to put tiles on the walls in the hallway. One of our neighbors have a few meters of the original hallway-tiles: light blue with a row of black square tiles at the bottom. Since blue is not my colors when it comes to interiors we decided to use the same size tiles as the original in a greyish-cream color that goes well with the other colors in the house. We 'reproduced' the row of black square tiles as well. Pretty!




There are a couple of things that originally came with the house in the 50's and we wanted to 'recycle':

The brass edge for the doormat:


The bakelite free/occupied sign for the downstairs toilet:


The 'ding-dong' doorbell (ugly plastic and quite big, but has the perfect spot there and has a beautiful, old fashioned sound)


One of the old kitchen cabinets found in the garage (I'm going to clean this one and leave the paintwork as it is. After repairing the doors we place it somewhere in the living or dining room)


After starting with cleaning the stairs we quite like the original bluish-grey color. We consider to leave the stairs after removing all the carpet glue as they are - didn't decided on this one yet:


Outside there is one little corner kind of 'ready': where I've put a climbing jasmine plant (found elsewhere in the garden) and moved my pretty double-flowered hortensia from the other house (after a rigorous trimming session).

The front garden is still empty, but we planted two more rows of the beech hedging to frame it around (the brown bits on the right are the new ones, they have leaves now) I like the beech hedging because the leaves are retained in a dry state throughout the winter.

Starting with finishing touches

There is some progress, at last! We've spent 4 days with finishing ceilings, painting doors laying floors. The weather finally turned sunny and summery and it was a joy to spend all those days in the new house and the huge (and quiet!) garden. There are still enough things that have to be done but I think we will be able to move in by the end of may!
(I'm still wearing BF's rather ugly workwear bib-trousers, but thankfully not for long anymore!)

Heritage

Recently I've spent a short week in Hungary. As I'm always looking for stuff for our new house I spotted a few 'new' old things at my grandma's house. The old scale with a coupe of the original iron weights above was my great-grandmother's, just like the old wedding picture and the 30's Singer I've already got. the little oily was made by my grandma and the lamp shade was a gift to her from my mum about 50 years ago.

Dirty hands

Last week in a hurry we've managed to finish the downstairs toilet and the kitchen floor just in time! Yesterday I've done a morning shift in the hospital and after that I have crawled on my hands and knees on the floor for 4 hours to grout the kitchen tiles... Mr. X was very motivated to finish everything but all I wanted is to get some rest. My hands were swollen and dirty, pfffff.....
The toilet is not fully ready though, only the back wall is finished for 80%. I still have to grout the side walls, but you get the idea. Love the little black row of tiles!



Here is what the kitchen floor looked like today in the morning. We used dark grey grouting, hence my dirty looking hands in the first picture. I quickly cleaned everything one more time before the kitchen-guy got started:



And here it is, our 50's style 'Piet Zwart' kitchen! Actually, this design was the standard kitchen from the late 20's till the '60's in every Dutch home. We choose a brand new one. There is one kitchen maker who currently holds the licenses since most parts are handmade and painted in one particular fabric in the country. The sizing of these cabinets is still different from the standard sizing of the other cabinets, but everything is modified to fit built-in appliances, which was not the case 60-70 years ago.  I love the pale pastel green color!!!
(For once, after a bit of cleaning I don't have to do anything here today, just watch someone else doing the hard work! In the evening I start again with 4 nightshifts in a row, so that's enough for now.)